The pipeline explosions I wrote about last week were neither a beginning nor an end to Europe’s economic woes. The “invisible scissors” cutting all ties between Europe and the rest of Eurasia were already active since months — if not years — and did not stop for a minute ever since. However, now they’ve become busier than ever.
Itincreasingly looks like that the rather cruel metaphor I brought up in April, is now becoming a reality in front of our eyes — in a strictly figurative sense of course. As I wrote back then:
Back in the age of shoguns and samurai, there was a rather bloody way a noble warrior could restore honor for himself or for his family by committing a form of voluntary ritual suicide. What contemporary societies rarely grasp, is that the person in question had to die no matter what. He had to choose between falling into enemy hands (and being tortured — then executed resulting in the loss of his and his family’s honor), or performing this rather painful ritual by himself.
After several decades of magical thinking and self-delusion Europe has now found itself in the same situation. Leaders of this once prosperous peninsula of Eurasia have now decided to severe themselves from Russian fossil fuel supplies: starting with coal in August, then moving on to oil and gas. Lacking its own adequate supplies of energy carriers tough this act will effectively self-terminate the EU economy — an act equivalent to a ritual suicide; a desperate attempt to restore the continent’s lost honor.